Hi there,
Welcome to the 13th edition of "State of anew sleep".
Every month I share snippets of what I (and the team) at anew sleep are working on.
Here's what happened.
Closing 2024 and Talking 2025
Wrapping up a full year is always a great way to reflect on what went well—and what didn’t.
We decided to sit down with all the co-founders of anew sleep for a board meeting to discuss:
• How did 2024 go (economy-wise)?
• What was great about ‘24?
• What was bad about ‘24?
• What do we want to achieve in ‘25?
• What are our main initiatives for the coming year?
Originally, we made a budget based on the idea that we’d all be working full-time on anew sleep in 2024. But fate had other plans, and now we’re all working full-time at the agency I founded with Mads back in 2015.
That said, even though Haris and I stepped down from full-time to part-time roles at anew sleep (less than 5 hours a week each), we still managed to get really close to our original 2024 budget.
We ended up making about $150,000 less in revenue than we’d planned. I don’t know if us working full-time would’ve made the difference. We faced some unfortunate setbacks—like thousands of products becoming unsellable due to product issues right before BFCM.
What was great about ‘24?
Despite everything, we nearly hit our budget. We were expecting a small EBITDA loss, but it looks like we’re actually going to end the year in the black. Cheers to that!
The not-so-great parts of 2024?
Going out of stock multiple times. Dealing with unsellable products. Not the best experience, but you live and learn.
Looking ahead to 2025:
Our goal is to double our revenue while Haris and I continue working less than 5 hours a week each. This is possible because a team member who’ll be working 30 hours a week on anew sleep. They’re already in place, and we’ll start onboarding for the role soon.
Aside from that, our core focus will be:
Developing and launching new products.
We’ve got a strong pipeline of 15+ products in the works—some are being shipped to our 3PL, some are in production, and others are still in development. It’s exciting to see it all come together, and nothing beats the feeling of launching a product that gains traction.
Improving our liquidity and securing more capital.
We’ve built strong partnerships, and I’m optimistic about improving payment terms with most of them. We’ve already got some big wins here (like invoicing with Meta and +60-day terms with suppliers), but there’s still room to improve.
Main initiatives for 2025 will be new product development, onboarding our new team member and create ads that make the ROAS go 📈
Testing new ad platforms
In the early days of anew sleep, we launched with a bang—over 30 million impressions from media site banners. It sparked brand interest and gave us a strong start.
Now, we’re revisiting that model. I’ve spotted some opportunities to improve it and drive profitable ROAS at scale. It’s early days, but performance is already on par with Meta and Google, so we’re excited to keep testing this approach.
Of course, this strategy isn’t for everyone. Media sites tend to have broad audiences, so if your product doesn’t have broad appeal, it won’t work long-term because of limited targeting options.
At the end of the day, it all comes back to the OG marketing fundamentals:
Frequency and sequence.
Making sure people see your brand enough times—and with enough variety in creatives and messaging—to help them form a connection with your brand.
Conclusion
Thanks for reading so far. I will be doing this every month. If there's something specific you want to hear about in these updates: Shoot me a message on LinkedIn.
See you in a month.
